How to open an Excel file in C#?

You need to have installed Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO).

VSTO can be selected in the Visual Studio installer under Workloads > Web & Cloud > Office/SharePoint Development.

After that create a generic .NET project and add a reference to Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel via ‘Add Reference… > Assemblies’ dialog.

Application excel = new Application();
Workbook wb = excel.Workbooks.Open(path);

Missing.Value is a special reflection struct for unnecessary parameters replacement


In newer versions, the assembly reference required is called Microsoft Excel 16.0 Object Library. If you do not have the latest version installed you might have Microsoft Excel 15.0 Object Library, or an older version, but it is the same process to include.

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